Aussie Pontiac lovers mourn demise of brand

Pontiac fans in Australia are saddened by GM's decision to axe the Pontiac nameplate. By RICHARD BLACKBURN.

Aussie Pontiac lovers mourn demise of brand

09 June 2009Richard Blackburn

To David Milton, the Pontiac nameplate was a badge of honour for the rebellious baby boomer generation.

Powered by loud and powerful big block V8s, Pontiacs reflected the “rebel without a cause” attitude of the late fifties, which spilled over into the “muscle car” madness of the sixties and seventies, when the Pontiac GTO and Firebird Trans Am produced as much horsepower as a current Commodore V8.

“To me, Pontiac was that James Dean era. People bought Pontiacs because they wanted to break away and do their own thing. It was a car for the non-conformists,” he said.

“They didn’t care about obeying speed limits, they just wanted to hop in their car and go for it,” he said.

The brand, once a poster boy in the General Motors stable, will be discontinued next year as GM attempts to haul itself back from the brink of bankruptcy with a range of more environmentally-friendly, fuel-efficient cars.

Milton, who owns a 1955 Pontiac Chieftain V8 with a thirst for fuel about eight times that of a current Toyota Prius, fears it will also spell the beginning of the end for the 450-strong Pontiac owners’ club – and the estimated 2000 other Pontiac owners - in Australia.

“We’re all getting older and there aren’t any younger people coming through. It is very, very sad to see the demise of something that you’ve been brought up on,” he said.

But he admits Pontiac, at one stage the third-biggest selling brand in the US behind Chevrolet and Ford, is a product of a bygone era.

“It really died 30 years ago,” he said.

Most Pontiac enthusiasts believe the brand became fatally compromised when it moved to more efficient, smaller horsepower cars following the oil shocks of the seventies.

An attempt to return the brand to its roots, which involved a re-badged, imported V8 version of the Commodore, appeared to be gaining momentum until the global economic crisis struck, destroying a billion-dollar export contract for Holden in the process.

For Milton, the axing of the brand will do little to dampen enthusiasm for his Chieftain.

“It sucks gas like you would not believe but I just love the sound of that V8. It gives you a massive buzz,” he said.

The car also turns heads.

“I drove to Bathurst a while back and got pulled over by the police three times. They just wanted to look at the car.”

Christophe Boribon, national auction manager for the Shannons group, says the axing of Pontiac could spark renewed collector interest in rare Pontiac muscle cars of the sixties and seventies.

“Some of the early GTOs and Firebirds are very sought after. The big block V8s have that desirability factor,” he said.

“Three’s always going to be interest in some of the special editions, especially the big engine, high horsepower versions,” he said.

He said the GTO “Judge” models, made between 1969 and 1971, often fetched between $30,000 and $60,000 at auction, while the high-performance “Ram Air” models, which forced air into the engine through a bonnet scoop, could fetch between $150,000 and $250,000.

Boribon said the Pontiac brand was a “sleeper” in the collectible market, with Pontiacs typically fetching less at auction than Chevrolet Camaros, despite the fact that the cars shared the same underpinnings and engines.